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One of the features on my TiVo that I love the most is the ability to analyse the programmes I record and to suggest ones that I might be interested in. Without it I might never have spotted Ginger Snaps tucked away on Sci-Fi late on a Sunday night, but with it, it popped up in the list of programmes that the TiVo thought I might want to watch. The EPG identified it as a modern werewolf film with two female leads, which seemed interesting enough to give it a go. I was immediately hooked by the best werewolf film I'd seen since An American Werewolf in London, thanks many to the excellent performances of the two leads, Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle. The pair play the Fitzgerald sisters - 15-year-old Brigitte, or "B", (Perkins) and nearly-sixteen Ginger (Isabelle) - who live in the mind-numbingly boring suburb of Bailey Downs. Social outcasts, the two sisters are a tight team bound together by a childhood pact ("out by sixteen or dead in the scene") and obsessed with staging and photographing gruesome tableaux of their own deaths. The two girls' lives are changed on the night of a full moon and Ginger's first period when she is attacked by the "Beast of Bailey Downs", which has been killing their neighbours' pets. Ginger heals remarkably rapidly, but has been infected by the creature and starts undergoing a series of unexpected changes, including hair in unexpected places and a tail. Although, on the plus side, she does change from goth outcast to school sex bomb, so it's not all bad. Ginger Snaps has a nice line in dark comedy, so Ginger's changes lead to some hilarious moments, including Brigitte taping down her sister's tail and the guidance counsellor assuming that Ginger's "changes" are due to the onset of her first period and graphically telling the sisters what to expect "for the next thirty years". Other classic moments include the piercing scene, Ginger taking down Trina Sinclair on the hockey field and mealtimes in the Fitzgerald house (Mimi Rogers is wonderful as their mother Pamela, who eagerly awaits the arrival of her daughters' first periods). Perkins and Isabelle put in excellent performances as the two sisters, whose relationship is one of the film's many highspots. They are completely believable as Brigitte and Ginger, whether its as social outcasts or post-attack as Ginger becomes more and more infected and her sister increasingly desperate to save her. Ginger Snaps is one of the films where the DVD varies greatly from region to region, and even within region as the Canadian edition is far superior to the US (which is in 4:3 and only has a solitary trailer in the extras department). By contrast, those north of the 49th parallel get the film in widescreen and packed with extras: Writer Karen Walton and director John Fawcett contribute separate commentaries, and both are well worth a listen, although I found Walton's to be the more interesting of the two. The pair also provide commentaries on the deleted scenes, explaining why they were cut from the film (mostly for reasons of timing and pacing). Some of the cuts are simply the topping and tailing of scenes, but they're still good to have. The remaining extras include a making of featurette, some audition and rehearsal footage (in which Perkins looks nothing like the morose girl seen in the film), a brief look at the creation of the werewolf creature, trailers, cast and crew bios, a photo gallery and some of the fake magazine covers created for the film. Despite the slight dip in the film third, Ginger Snaps is an excellent film that deserves a far wider audience that it has achieved. This DVD is streets ahead of the other editions and fully does the film justice. back to the top |
GINGER SNAPS |
